The Transmission of Commodity Price Super-Cycles

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Benguria, Felipe; Saffie, Felipe; Urzua, Sergio
• 署名单位: University of Kentucky; University of Virginia; University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdad078
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: business cycles; trade liberalization; earnings inequality; world prices; PRODUCTIVITY; COMPETITION; COSTS

摘要

We examine two key channels through which commodity price super-cycles affect the economy: a wealth channel, through which higher commodity prices increase domestic demand, and a cost channel, through which they induce wage increases. By exploiting regional variation in exposure to commodity price shocks and administrative firm-level data from Brazil, we empirically disentangle these transmission channels. We introduce a dynamic model with heterogeneous firms and workers to further quantify the mechanisms and evaluate welfare. A counterfactual economy in which commodity booms are purely endowment shocks experiences only 30% of the intersectoral labour reallocation between tradables and nontradables, and 40% of the within-tradable labour reallocation between domestic and exported production. Finally, the consumption-equivalent welfare gain of a commodity super-cycle is twice as large in the counterfactual economy.